


Reflection

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Even if he starts as a villain, Humor, I just wanted villain Tony today ok, I wrote this in 2 hours, Identity Porn, M/M, Random & Short, Secret Identity, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve and Tony were meant to be ok, Tony Stark Feels, Tony is an Avenger, Villain Tony Stark, bits of canon in here, go me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:21:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10865172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: “Did you just call Cap my husband?” Tony asks.“With the amount of sexual tension the two of you produce you might as well be married,” Vankov mumbles and Tony returns to his work.“If marriages were just sexual tension they wouldn’t last long,” Tony says.“Explains why you’re divorced from the good Captain,” Vankov quips back, laughing when Tony glares at him again.





	Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted villain Tony and I wanted to write before work. So I wrote this little bad boy before I had to go :)
> 
> Hope y'all like it!

Tony wasn’t _fond_ of Vankov per se, but he was probably the only person on this planet who was even remotely as close to intelligent as Tony. There was that Wakandan prince too but something told Tony he had no interest in being a villain. Tony resented the label but he supposed he _did_ break a lot of laws to try and get his point across and as his lovely rival Captain America liked to point out it was a bit hypocritical. But Tony was calling for accountability and he made damn sure the public knew what they needed to about the Avengers’ super secret missions the government liked to keep hushed up. Vankov was instrumental in that because he made Tony’s job easier and he wasn’t fond of America so he had been willing to help him out despite hating him. He hadn’t known why at first but he was _right_ ticked when he found it it was because of _Howard_.

“Your husband has made an appearance,” Vankov tells him and Tony half turns, squinting at him over his shoulder. “Get back to your computer, we have five minutes to complete the hack and escape before we’re fucked,” he tells Tony.

“Did you just call Cap my _husband_?” he asks.

“With the amount of sexual tension the two of you produce you might as well be married,” Vankov mumbles and Tony returns to his work.

“If marriages were just sexual tension they wouldn’t last long,” Tony says.

“Explains why you’re divorced from the good Captain,” Vankov quips back, laughing when Tony glares at him again.

“Shit, he’s got company. Ten bucks says I can hijack the wings,” Tony says as Falcon lands on the ground.

“Get your work done, we have no time to play around,” Vankov all but growls at him.

He hits enter on his keyboard, releasing the necessary information to the world and grins, “done. I’m hijacking the wings,” Tony says and he sets to work while Vankov curses him out. Tony tells him to get his work done because they had three minutes. That gets him a bunch of annoyed grumbles but Tony jumps up in joy as he manages to get into the operating system on the wings.

Falcon looks real pissed when he starts flying in loops with no control but not as pissed of as dear Cap. He finds the nearest camera and glares at it, knowing that Tony could see the whole thing. Tony laughs and Cap knows him so well he scowls more without even hearing it. “You done Vankov, or do I have to do your share for you?” he asks.

“Fuck you,” Vankov snaps in his thick Russian accent. He finishes his work though and Tony manages to throw up the reinforced doors _just_ as Captain America reaches the room they’re in. he and Vankov make it to the roof up through the vents and they escape once again, this time releasing Black Widow’s dirty laundry for all those to see. It had been _work_ given the encryptions on the files but he and Vankov managed with a little help from the security system Tony _made_. It was almost hilarious to him that the government still had no clue that he was Iron Man.

*

Steve was a man out of his time and he knew it, so how he ended up dating the most advanced man on the planet currently he had no idea. It was nice though, because Tony explained technology in terms he understood complete with hands on lessons. People weren’t so patient with him at SHIELD and once he saw how people made the computer _do_ that he was fine. Tony also informed him of things like phishing, which SHIELD never mentioned at all. Steve wanted to tell him that he was far more helpful than his workplace but that would require him releasing confidential information and with Iron Man running around doing that already it was a miracle his actual identity hasn’t been released already.

That could be because Peggy made sure to obscure his identity from the beginning- only a few need-to-know people knew who Steve Rogers was. As far as everyone else knew he died of Polio in forty-two. It has always been a point of contention with him but he understood why Peggy made that choice. He just… he just wished he could be Steve Rogers for once instead of always being Captain America. Cap was great, but representing all the good your country had to offer while also rising above the bad was difficult work and a guy could crack under that kind of pressure.

Maybe that was why he loved Tony so much, he always saw Steve for Steve. When they had met at that art exhibit Steve hardly expected to get along with the guy insulting the art but debating on what art looked like and why it was important had been surprisingly interesting and stimulating. Tony still thought all forms of postmodernism were useless and stupid but Steve loved it, that and dada. It was absurd, Tony was right, but that was the _point_. Everything on this god-forsaken world was absurd and made little sense and the art capitalized on that. It made Steve seem less out of place and lost in a world of absurdity, ridiculousness, and existential crisis.

“What is it you’re smiling about over there?” Tony asks, smiling at him over his shoulder. Steve hadn’t expected that the billionaire was a good cook and better than that his breakfast somehow tasted _exactly_ like Anne’s- a restaurant he used to frequent during the war. He had no idea _how_ that was but he wasn’t going to question having a little piece of home back either.

“Art,” he says, laughing when Tony rolls his eyes.

“Art is stupid,” Tony tells him, returning to a familiar argument. He would take offense if he knew that Tony didn’t really believe that, not after he heard Steve talk about why he loved art.

“Technology is stupid,” Steve counters.

“Only because the toaster scares you,” Tony quips back right away and Steve laughs to cover the pain. Tony hardly knew about the shell shock- PTSD they called it now, but popping noises sometimes made him jumpy. Toasters were not his friends, especially Tony’s unusually loud toaster. Tony was usually good about it though so Steve suspected that Tony suspected but he didn’t press for details, which he was grateful for.

“Well art scares you so we’re even,” Steve says.

“Art scares me because someone yelled at me for throwing food out in what I _thought_ was a trash can and it turned out it was some dude’s art. And then he basically orgasmed on me because that’s what he wanted,” Tony says, frowning.

“He wanted you to do that because the point of the exhibit was to display how useless and meaningless the display was. It was a _trash can_ , he expected people to treat it as such but people didn’t, instead they tried to pretend like there was some hidden meaning to the can when the meaning was a lack of one,” Steve says. He had been the first to do that but he didn’t get credit for it because Tony was famous and the exhibit was a _lot_ smaller when he saw it.

“Jesus Christ, why couldn’t artists have stuck to throwing things at the canvas like that dude who cut off his ear?” he mumbles.

“You’re thinking of Jackson Pollock, not Vincent van Gogh honey,” Steve says, laughing. Tony looks annoyed but he leaves it alone in favor of making food. While Tony does that Steve picks up the morning paper, something he knew Tony only kept around because of him. Papers didn’t start showing up until six months in and Tony never touched them unless it was to move them out of his way. It was sweet of him, Steve thinks. He preferred the morning paper over the digital version because he felt so… _lost_ in a world that was so unlike his own. And Tony was the only one who ever tried to compensate for that by doing small things like keeping the morning paper around. SHIELD gave him a tablet but Tony gave him a notebook. It made him feel more welcome in this new digital age for Tony to reach out to him like that.

It was important that it was _Tony_ too, because he was the leader of that digital age and even _he_ could see that Steve was falling behind. And usually Tony wasn’t all that welcoming to those who were falling behind either. Once Tony had been watching the news and there was some segment about technology taking over and Tony had rolled his eyes and told the people on the TV to go fuck a flower if they liked nature so much. It made Steve curious to know what Tony accepted him so much when he wouldn’t usually.

“What is it you’re thinking so hard about back there?” Tony asks, looking over his shoulder.

“You, and why you don’t care that I prefer things old school instead of favoring all that newfangled tech,” he says.

Tony throws back his head and laughs, “oh my _god_ , I’ve never heard someone use newfangled in a sentence before! To answer our question though, you preference is just that. So you like notebooks over tablets, fine, they take up way more space, they’re messier, and people are more likely to lose a ten dollar book than a thousand dollar tablet with a whole lot more memory and function but whatever. That’s fine. What I don’t like is when people insult technology and the people who use it without ever understanding _why_ they use it. People bitch about millennials and being on their phones all the time but they have no idea that they’ve used technology to create _entirely new_ methods of communication with those phones. There are a million more examples where that came from but the point stands. You like things old school because it works for you, not because you’re scared of what advancement looks like and you’re scared about being left behind.”

Oh boy was Tony wrong about that last bit. Steve was _terrified_ that he was left behind, mostly because it became more and more obvious every day that he _was_ left behind, a relic of the past. The only time he didn’t feel like that was with Tony.

*

Steve dodges another blast from Iron Man’s repulsor and sighs, “why do you keep doing this?” he asks. He was _so_ tempted to ask Tony how his systems kept failing when they haven’t in any other area- Steve and the rest of the Avengers have tried and _tried_ to break into the systems and never managed- but SHIELD left that to Coulson because Tony had no idea who Steve really was nor did they know about his relationship with the man.

“Because you need to be held accountable for your actions Cap. Jesus Christ, you and the Avengers run around doing shit _no one_ has a say in and don’t act like the government gives you regulations because they don’t, and if they do you ignore them. You’ve broken almost as many laws as I have and you’re not known as a villain like I am. That’s unacceptable,” Iron Man tells him.

“So what, you’re going to hack us and release all of our information while keeping your own identity secret? If you were for accountability you wouldn’t hide behind that suit,” Steve snaps at him.

“And if you really cared about the people you wouldn’t hide behind a bad rendition of the American flag. Do you even _know_ what America represents to people these days?” Iron Man asks, head tilted to the side. No, Steve wasn’t very sure on that at all because the world was giving him mixed messages about that. “Thought so, Cap. You want to represent America maybe you should start to lead by example and take your damn costume off and step up to the plate. Take responsibility for your actions; ask the people what they want instead of acting like you’re above the law and then criticizing me for doing the same. I’m not the only hypocrite here, Cap, because from where I’m standing if you’re not willing to follow the laws you’re no better than the bad guys. Who better to tell you that than a bad guy in the flesh?” Iron Man says.

He flies off after that and Steve lets him go, unable to raise his shield.

*

Tony wraps his arms around Steve, “what’s wrong?” he asks, pressing his face into Steve’s shoulder.

“Just thinking about some things,” Steve says, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist.

“Like?” Tony prompts. Steve, in his experience, was weird and maybe a little to into art but there was something there that drew Tony in. After a lot of quiet reflection he realized it was because of the pain he felt. Steve Rogers, for all intents and purposes, lived a life that was charmed on the outside but any length of time with the man would tell you he had issues. Probably issues everyone else in his life overlooked _because_ his life was pretty good on the outside. Tony had the same problem on a grander scale so he could relate. Steve was probably the only person he’s ever met who didn’t try and tell him he couldn’t have problems due to his privileged life.

There were lots of problems he _didn’t_ have thanks to his money and intelligence but there were plenty of things money couldn’t buy. He was a man with everything and nothing as Yinsen once put it. It was after that incident in Afghanistan that he knew what he needed to do and he did it.

“Iron Man,” Steve says eventually. It throws Tony off because Steve has never even talked about his alter ego before let alone acted like Iron Man had any sort of affect on him.

“What about him?” Tony asks, frowning. Thankfully he was so thrown he didn’t have to act too much. Overdoing it always made people suspicious and he was well known for being over the top.

“His claims about accountability, you think he’s right?” Steve asks. Hard question and Tony wasn’t sure how Tony Stark was supposed to answer that. He knew how _Iron Man_ would answer; he even knew how the old Tony Stark would answer but that Tony was as real as Iron Man was now. He was just a suit the old Tony wore like a shield to protect himself and now… now Tony had a literal suit of armor for that. It made him wonder what kind of suit Tony Stark now wore, who wore the mask with his face on it.

“I think that if you’re going to make decisions that affect the lives of others then you have a responsibility to those people to own up to anything that went wrong and to fix it to the best of your abilities. No one gets to make decisions that affect other people without considering how those people will be affected, no one gets to be that special or that selfish,” he says. “I’ve done that and trust me, it never ends well, not for anyone.”

He had been selfish and cruel and he had never been happy despite his attempt to swallow the pain with as much alcohol, pills, and sex as he could. And that was _nothing_ compared to the pain he caused others. Everyone suffered when one person acted as selfishly as he had and no one should ever have the power to hurt people like he had. And the Avengers had a body count almost as high as his.

Steve looks him over for a long moment and leans forward, pressing his forehead to Tony’s and just breathing there. Tony lets him, soaking in the intimacy of the moment knowing he didn’t deserve an ounce of it, not after what he’s done.

*

Steve wasn’t even sure _what_ happened but from what he gathered Iron Man’s sidekick with the whips turned on him and the battle was explosive. This particular Avengers headquarters was in public and Steve was surprised to see how much work Iron Man did to avoid having Whiplash’s anger hit the public.

People were screaming everywhere and Steve was doing his best to clear the streets but with Whiplash on the loose it was difficult because he was dodging blasts too. “I’ll cover the streets to the west,” Natasha yells and Clint takes off after her to cover her ass.

“Sam, you take the east,” Steve yells and Sam goes, “Wanda, cover the north. Bruce, cover me, I’m going to go try taking Whiplash down.”

Bruce looks at him like he’s insane but he goes anyways, narrowly missing one of Whiplash’s electric whips. Another lash comes his way and he dodges it, landing behind a fallen piece of building and Bruce roars behind him. He sighs and picks himself up just in time to see both of Whiplash’s whips wrapped around Iron Man’s arms as he slowly continued to wrap them around more until he gets a solid grip, his whole suit sparking like mad, and he pulls the whips. Whiplash goes flying into a building, falling unconscious on the ground and Iron Man falls onto the ground.

“Looks like we’ve got them both, Cap!” Clint’s voice says over the comms. For some reason Steve doesn’t feel very good about that.

*

When Tony wakes up he feels dizzy and hurt and it takes him a long moment for him to remember what happened. _Shit_.

“You have some explaining to do,” someone tells him. Tony looks over and to his intense surprise _Steve_ is sitting there. He looks around and determines at once that he’s not in a public hospital.

“Where the hell am I?” he asks.

“SHIELD headquarters,” Steve tells him. “There’s going to be a press conference tomorrow at noon, the Avengers are going to reveal their identities. Maybe you should come too,” he says.

Tony snorts, “yeah, something tells me that Coulson will enjoy throwing me in jail too much to make it.” God damn _Agent_. He always hated that asshole.

Steve smiles, “oh I did some talking with him and Fury. I told them you were more of an asset with us than against us and they agreed. Welcome to the Avengers, Tony.”

He stares at Steve for a long moment, “the public can’t possibly think that’s a good idea,” he says, trying to find something, _anything_ to get out of this.

“The public already thinks you’re more of an Avenger than the Avengers according to this morning’s headlines. And you saved a lot of people yesterday with Whiplash. You were more effective in containing him than we were,” Steve says.

“That’s because I knew what he was using and you didn’t. Fuck. _Fuck_. I never wanted to be an Avenger! I don’t even _deserve_ that title!” he says. He was just trying to make sure the real heroes were doing their job right, not trying to _become_ a hero.

“The people say otherwise, and weren’t you the one who suggested listening to what they wanted us heroes to do?” Steve asks.

Tony squints, “you’re Captain America aren’t you? I should have known when I found out you were the kind of freak that prefers the morning paper to websites,” he says and Steve laughs.

*

Tony stands in front of a large crowd with flashing and noise and all the things he’s used to except for once he’s nervous. “I’m sure you’re all wondering what I’m doing here after the revelation of who, exactly, the Avengers were. Well, I’ve got something to tell you all too. I am Iron Man, and I’m an Avenger too,” he says and the crowd goes wild. Off to the side Steve nods at him, smiling just a bit and maybe, _just_ maybe this won’t be a horrible idea.


End file.
